Michael James' photos a whirlwind tour of the 'long haul' of life

Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune

Photographer Michael Gaylord James sits for a portrait along with a framed image of himself during his youth and his dog Che Thursday, April 14, 2016 at his home in Chicago. James has an exhibition of 21 of his photos from his life that will be on exhibition through the month at AdventureLand Gallery.

Photographer Michael Gaylord James sits for a portrait along with a framed image of himself during his youth and his dog Che Thursday, April 14, 2016 at his home in Chicago. James has an exhibition of 21 of his photos from his life that will be on exhibition through the month at AdventureLand Gallery.

Before we get to Michael Gaylord James' spectacular photo exhibition at the AdventureLand Gallery in Wicker Park, let me take you to a very different part of town and tell you about Ann Landers' spacious apartment on East Lake Shore Drive.

The advice columnist's real name was Eppie Lederer, and her place offered spectacular views of Lake Michigan to the north and east. It was filled with paintings (Chagall, Picasso, Renoir); sculptures, fine furniture, expensive Chinese vases, keys to cities; dozens of owl figurines, symbols of wisdom that she collected and that were sent to her by fans; wall panels and sconces imported from England; candelabra and chandeliers; a Steinway piano made of walnut; and what she referred to as her "wall of fame," which was the most astonishing collection of personal photographs I ever expect to see.

The photos were in ordinary 8-by-10 frames, the sort you might buy at any department store, and they were arranged randomly, without any chronological or aesthetic order. These were not selfies, mind you, but photos taken by others of Eppie with, among dozens of famous and celebrated people, Bill Clinton, Kirk Douglas, Helen Hayes, Robert Redford, Mike Wallace, Richard Nixon and Muhammad Ali. The ones that particularly grabbed me hung side by side in the middle of the wall: Eppie getting hugged by Nelson Mandela next to a picture of her getting kissed by the man lifting her off the ground, that man being Michael Jordan.

Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune

Photographer Michael Gaylord James sits for a portrait while looking though his website Thursday, April 14, 2016 at his home in Chicago.

Photographer Michael Gaylord James sits for a portrait while looking though his website Thursday, April 14, 2016 at his home in Chicago.

(Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

James' photos are not as celebrity-studded, though there is one of President John F. Kennedy riding in a car in 1962 with Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, and another of blues greats Muddy Waters and James Cotton playing the bygone Fat Black Pussycat nightclub here. Though James is not in any of the 21 photos of his "Pictures From the Long Haul," they form a compelling personal narrative of a life interestingly and meaningfully lived.

The earliest shot is of a man standing on a pier jutting out into the lake. It was taken in 1961 when James was a freshman at Lake Forest College. He had come there from his parents' home in Westport, Conn., but his father was from Chicago and James says he can remember to this day his first visit as a child to his grandparents' home in South Shore. He also remembers coming back at 14, staying with his dad at a downtown hotel and making a trip to a Rush Street store to purchase bluejeans he had seen advertised in a men's magazine.

James would make his home here after college, and he has been an influential part of the city. In the late 1960s he founded a political organization called Rising Up Angry. In addition to publishing a newspaper, the organization was a social/political force of white, working-class folks who organized residents of Lakeview/Uptown and offered free or low-cost legal and health services, staged events and worked alongside such similar outfits as the Black Panthers and Young Lords to fight against racism and injustice and for fair housing.

The organization lasted until 1975, by which time James was on to the next thing, co-founding with his then-wife, Stormy Brown, and Katy Hogan the venerable and beloved Heartland Cafe in Rogers Park, with its charming slogan "Good Wholesome Food for the Mind and Body."

Now 74 years old, James has acted in movies such as "Stony Island," "Code of Silence," "The Package" and "The Fugitive"; runs his own website and remains active in progressive causes; teaches college classes; contributes prolifically to the website theragblog.com, where his writing is stylish and fascinating (and which, together with this photo exhibition, forms the foundation for what James plans to be a book, one of these days); and on Saturdays from 9-10 a.m. he hosts with Hogan and Thom Clark a radio program called "The Live from the Heartland Show" on WLUW-FM 88.7.

"I never really thought of myself as a photographer, though I have been taking pictures since I got my first Brownie camera as a kid," says James, who has had his photos published in newspapers and magazines and had a few modest exhibitions. "It has been a way for me to document things as I went along. And every picture brings back memories."

So, there are memoires evoked by a photo of boxers training in Cuba in 1991; fishermen in Monterey, Calif., in 1964; a dancer at a Moscow nightclub in 1990; and on and on. The most recent photo in the exhibition was taken in 2014, a shot of two young women on a beach in Cape Town, South Africa, where James and his wife, Paige, were visiting.

AdventureLand is a clean and tiny space, and it will not take you long to look at and linger over the photos on display, and they will likely stay with you long beyond your visit.

The young man you might meet when you drop into AdventureLand is Max Fitzpatrick, who works there while fashioning a career as a filmmaker and is the son of artist/actor/writer Tony Fitzpatrick, who helped create the gallery as a showcase for up-and-coming artists in 2012.

"I like spending so much time around Michael's work," says Max, who has on display in the space a sort of small self-portrait he drew when he was 5 years old.

It is not for sale but James' photos are, modestly priced at $150-$350. Little red dots on the walls next to some photos signify that they have been purchased and will, when the show concludes at the end of April, be hanging on walls in homes all over the area, and maybe places beyond.

Realizing that and thinking about Eppie's "wall of fame" photos was a hard reminder that we now live in an age when most of us take and see photos with phones, thousands of them, and in so doing diminish their impact and beauty and thus their ability to bring us forcefully back to places and times and people we have already forgotten.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 24, 2016, in the Arts + Entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "The `long haul' - Michael James' photos catch moments from an active, varied life - Sidewalks" —
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